You can successfully infuse bee-honey with cannabis. It's not a hard process but it takes some time and careful selection of just the right honey to use as your base.
The cannabinoids in cannabis, which are the active medicinal molecules, are fat soluble. This means that they readily dissolve in fat, are absorbed more efficiently in the presence of fat and can be stored in fat.
This is why, when we make an infused cannabis edible, we would choose a high fat medium, like a butter or an oil as the most common infusion mediums, especially for homemade edibles.
Bee honey isn't typically recognized as a high fat food, so it isn't something that many people would try to infuse with cannabis or, even know that it is possible to do.
In order to successfully do this a honey that hasn't been highly filtered or processed, must be used.
This type of honey is typically found in the backyard gardens of bee-keeping hobbyists and very small apiaries.
You want to use the cloudiest honey that you can find because this means that the honey still maintains lots of beeswax particles. It's the wax particles that THC, CBD and the other 109 cannabinoids are binding to.
Cloudy honey is typically not very translucent. This is what it looks like:
As you will notice, you can't really see through it. This is the type of honey you want to use.
When I infuse honey, I use the following ingredients:
- 2 kg container or 1 litre of cloudy honey;
- 1 ounce or 30 grams of decarboxylated whole cannabis buds, not ground;
- and 4 tbsp of bee-pollen or sunflower lecithin.
This is bee-pollen. It contains lecithin and just like sunflower lecithin, it helps to attract both water and fatty substances. Basically, it gives the cannabiniods additional molecules to bind to and makes the infusion more efficiently blended or emulsified.
Special Tools Required:
A Magical Butter Machine or a crock pot;
A strainer;
A spatula;
And a Mason jar with its lid or another glass container that will hold 3/4 of a litre of infused honey.
Directions:
- Decarboxylate 30 grams or 1 ounce of the cannabis strain of your choice. As I prefer to use a Magical Butter Machine, I put the buds into the machine whole and don't grind them in advance. I always decarb them first though. Here's my previous post on how to do this step:
- Place the buds in the bottom of the Magical Butter Machine. This is what the machine looks like:
Here's 30 grams or 1 ounce of bud in the machine:
- Add the 2 kg or 1 litre of cloudy honey on top of the buds and the bee-pollen on top of that.
- Place the lid on the Magical Butter Machine and set the temperature to 130 degrees F and run it for 8 hours. Sometimes, I will set the machine to run for 2 hours and then I will check the mixture to make sure that it isn't scorching. If you want to do this, you just have to be prepared to re-start the machine, every 2 hours and let it run for 4 cycles.
If you decide to use the crock-pot method, you'll want to grind your decarboxylated bud and be prepared to monitor the temperature and regularly stir your honey blend for 8 hours. It is important that you use a low setting because the honey will burn if it gets too hot.
- After the infusion has been heated and stirred for 8 hours, strain it off. In the Magical Butter Machine, you may only be left with a sandy pulp and the odd bit of partially intact bud material. If you pour it and strain it while it's still warm, it will actually pour. If you let it cool, it will harden. It's easier to strain when it's still warm and I recommend this.
Any pulp or cannabis sand that you strain off can be added directly to a recipe that calls for a sweet component. It will medicate it nicely and add to the sweetness of the recipe. It's great in cookies or squares.
- Place the cannabis infused bee honey in a glass container for long term storage. I keep it refrigerated and it will last indefinitely.
Cannabis infused bee-honey is incredibly versatile. It can be eaten right off a spoon, stirred into beverages, drizzled over other food and used directly in all kinds of recipes. It's most definitely a super-food and a medicine. We need to thank all our gardeners, bee keepers and of course the bees for creating this wonderful elixir.
I invite you to follow me on my journey and I welcome your comments.
~RebeccaRyan